Vasco Alves' work investigates the materiality of sound and aspects of acoustical phenomena through the use of unstable electronic and acoustic processes, which may include synthesis and amplification techniques, bagpipes and customised wind instruments.
For this release for Takuroku Vasco pares his tools back, sculpting a work based on a solo cycling trip he made through a long road in Portugal in the summer of 2020. The road was built in the 1940s, connecting the top of the country to the bottom via a winding central route. Recording the names of towns and villages with his phone and using that list of names as the spine for these recordings, he then adds a set of volatile synthesis systems, forming a bed of stripped-backed electronics for the text to thread itself through.
Part experimental audio diary, part road movie and part psychogeographic meditation, Estrada Longa is an absorbing work of chiselled, enveloping sound and haunting textual exploration.
Vasco Alves' work investigates the materiality of sound and aspects of acoustical phenomena through the use of unstable electronic and acoustic processes, which may include synthesis and amplification techniques, bagpipes and customised wind instruments.
Used sometimes concurrently but also individually, these processes of an often highly volatile nature tend to rely on minimal physical and compositional means.
With his bagpipes (Gaita de Fole in Portuguese) the focus lies in disrupting the airflow, exploiting the physical limits of the instrument and the interaction between its acoustic output and electronically generated audio (or other instruments). Aiming towards a musical experience that explores repetition, improvisation, psychoacoustics and its spatial impact.
Plays terrace bagpipes for Clube de Futebol "Os Belenenses".
1/3 of VA AA LR with Louie Rice and Adam Asnan.
1/2 of OndaXoque with Pedro Rufino.
Organiser of portaaaa.com.
Born in Lisbon, 1985.
